@wiress  
Let’s just say this is after he got blown up.

All this arguing and no one bought up the fact that I forgot his horn…

@BP  
You want him to be a kid and everyone to be OC?

Waiting for “Past Sins” fanfiction

I would like a fic of how he got seduced by the Dark Magics.
 
Fear.
 
Hatred.
 
Oh yes these things come so easy… and they give you such power over other ponies.

also, sad #1111  
Congrats Emombre!

Phazon eh?  
Lets see an evil shadow-y Celestia! Then her and Luna can fight and it’ll be like a mirror match!

Well, ideally it’s the writers job to come up with “Fanon BS” but since they didn’t, it is inevitable the fans will, which was what I was saying in my first post. The other posts were pointing our the show’s other villains do have fairly obvious motives, so a motive isn’t something the writers are incapable. I even showed how easy it is, all that was needed was a throw away line, like
 
“King Sombre planned to invade Equestria, so me and Luna stopped him but only made him more powerful.”
 
That’s all the writers had to do, and all this complaining wouldn’t have happened.

@Jack-O-Lantern
 
Tirek was supposed to be a devil, which usually don’t need a reason to be evil. They are literally made out of black magic. Same with Discord.
 
Sombre was a powerful but mortal unicorn (at first). Mortal adversaries like that need motives.

@RIG
 
Kindly avoiding jumping out the window, I just cleaned that.

One could go into the idea of a very dark turn of the “Unicorn’s Burden.” All the crystal ponies are hornless (also, wingless), so it’s possible he had “good” intentions on helping out the lowly earth ponies, but the power of ruling over the “inferior” creatures got to him over time. Alternatively, he just acted like a copy of King Leopold II.

@Trickquestion  
AHHHHH! AN UNECCESSARY OVERANALIZER! I MUST ESCAPE! *runs away*

He was a scholar who one day came across a spellbook of dark magic. He became so obsessed learning the spells that they corrupted his mind and deteriorated it to the point that he could only utter simple sentences and hated seeing anything bright and shiny or even smiling.

@RIG
 
Nightmare Moon had a reason to be evil, Queen Chrysalis was clearly enjoying herself but still had a practical motive for her actions, and Discord is described as the “SPIRIT of Disharmony”, which implies he’s magical and on some level is compelled to cause and enjoy chaos
 
But we know literally NOTHING about Sombre’s motives for being so tyrannical? Was he building something with that slave labor? Was he a usurper trying to crush resistance? Was he plotting to invade Equestria, justifying the Princess’s intervention? Not even a single throw away line.

@Rig  
No  
I’m just saying, that if we are going to treat him as a character instead of an evil robot, then we need a backstory to explain why he did what he did.

@Wilhelm II, Kaiser  
about the joker pic and don’t know and i think you are forgetting an important fact…  
this is, after all, A LITTLE KIDS SHOW! you want villains with a super complicate backstory in a KID SHOW?

@Equine  
They do if you try to use them as something that isn’t just a cardboard cut out.  
People aren’t just evil, they have reasons, everything has reasons.  
And since fanfics treat the characters as been real (In universe), that means they have to have a reason.
 
@RIG  
That tropes has a picture of the Joker as an example, despite the fact the Joker has reason for why he does what he does.

@Wilhelm II, Kaiser
 
“Why are you so evil Sombra?”  
“Because my daddy was a giraffe and nobody loved me WAAAAAAAAH”
 
Not every villain needs some convoluted backstory.

Well, what makes Celestia good? Give me an example of character development Celestia had that doesn’t involve fanwork.

@Wilhelm II, Kaiser  
in fiction there are characters that are evil just because they are evil  
end of the story.

Well, seeing as he has extremely minimal backstory (which he is pretty much He’s evil so me and Luna kicked his ass!) and his characterization is non-existent, it is inevitable fans will build those things for him.
 
There was once a just and kind king, but when the Changelings ravage a neighboring kingdom in search of love, he drained his empire of all it’s happiness in a gamble to hide his people. He, however corrupted by his own spell more then he anticipated, and was reborn King Sombre.
 
Boom. A reasonable backstory that contradicts nothing the show presents. See how easy that was?

@Rig  
But what makes them think that way?

If people were born assholes, that would almost make cynicism justified.
 
It’s possible he had a Freudian reason, or was raised to be a fear-mongering tyrant but being born evil is just silly.